


Sear

by Anonymous



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:55:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/





	Sear

“You’re going to be in sim with experienced pilots today.”

\-------------------------

Mako gets the feeling that Herc’s short haircut is a product of something deeper in his personality than the desire to avoid helmet head. However, this is only a feeling.

\-------------------------

The modified proto-jaeger---just a skeleton of pressure plates and pistons two percent of Striker Eureka’s size---curls its hands into fists.

\-------------------------

“How’re those knees of yours? On Gipsy, I mean. Heard you scored the budget for those coolant upgrades.”

Mako smiles proudly. “She’ll be a dancer, when she’s ready.”

\-------------------------

Herc chews on an energy bar, and chats briefly with one of the techs too. His easy confidence about this test is edifying, and Mako finds herself determined to be equal to it.

\-------------------------

The more you go into the drift, the easier it gets.

\-------------------------

The more you go into the drift with the same partner, the easier it gets, but Herc’s whole day’s schedule has been cleared out for this session with Mako. You never know if a young mind will thrash in the stream.

\-------------------------

“You might think it looks cool, but _do not_ try and crack your knuckles. I nearly lost about five bil worth of fingers when I was in a Mark 2 unit once.”

\-------------------------

Mako doesn’t try to imagine working with the limited joint articulation of the proto-jaeger. She tries to imagine inhabiting the muscles of ranger Hansen’s body, reaching through the drift to find herself with old scars.

\-------------------------

Herc hopes that Mako will be thinking about good things when the connection activates. He does his best to remember more about the news of the budget charts. Had Gipsy Danger been fitted for new elbows too?

\-------------------------

Mako practices her Calmest Breathing, Resolute Idea Of The Body exercises, and then gives the signal that she’s ready.

The PONS comes on.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The fragments of memories fade off, after a time.

You can coast on drift echo for hours, if you’re used to the feeling---and if you want to draw it out. Write your name with your left hand, with your right hand. Spin around like a dumb kid and laugh when your copilot gets dizzy. But when you’re not used to the feeling, there’s little that can entice you to savor it. Even at its giddy peaks---playing rock, paper, scissors---the feeling is inherently strange. New subjects coming out of the PONS link rarely need to be told to take time just to rest, sleep it off, or to focus on finding themselves in simple tasks.

Don’t try to read books.

Do not operate heavy machinery.

Mako practices her Calmest Breathing, Awareness Of The Hand Over The Chest As The Lungs Are Alive exercises and then drinks from a water bottle in small sips.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

Herc, for the most part, had been expecting to see Stacker.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The more you go into the drift, the easier it gets, but you never know when a young mind will---

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is much later, after the test is done, when Mako Mori comes into the knowledge that ranger Hansen is about to knock on her door. Three seconds later, it happens, and she hears the sound from outside herself, ringing in the chamber of the hallway, the touch of the bulkhead door on her knuckles.

“Come in.”

Herc Hansen steps carefully into the room and closes the door behind him. Mako knew that he would do this. She comes into the knowledge that whatever he is about to say next he has been practicing, rehearsing. She can feel this as one repetition of the sounds, a mantra in the pattern of her own voice.

Herc Hansen does not speak Japanese.

“I have felt… desire, in myself. And in others, other pilots, In the drift. I have felt what it means to be… to be satisfied, and to be unsatisfied.”

Herc takes off his jacket---the old one, with the patches that don’t have anything to do with kaiju---and lays it on the floor, over the strips of walking mat and the hard metal. His knees meet it a moment later. He takes off his watch without looking at it and sets it on the floor.  
It is the first time---the thought is an errant thing---that he has seen Mako Mori naked. Like he’s young, and he needs to mark out first times. She hadn’t been wearing anything when he’d knocked, standing by her bunk with her hands clasped, waiting patiently for the door to open.

She steps toward him, slowly, and Herc loses the cadence of his voice, struggles for the words that will set him free.

“I will do… whatever you want.”

Mako places a hand on the back of his head and finishes her breathing exercise. She doesn’t need to speak.


End file.
